Electric Sheep Company's Searchbot Answers Go Here.

then why make this post ?



Pick one or the other.

Or explain to me how they dont contradict themselves.

The way I read the progression
1- you basically say - if you dont want this stuff to happen set group permissions.
2- I say - that doesnt stop the bot.
3- you say - so what? it wouldnt stop a person either, and why do you care about people snooping your objects anyhow?

While your entitled to whatever opinion you want - I dont follow your logic.

I think there's some confusion or maybe misunderstandings around this point..

If you stand in the center (or anywhere, actually) of a sim, you can cam around and see the details of every parcel on that sim, including stuff like the access/ban lists. You can also see every object on the sim. The sheepbot doesn't need to go 'stand' on every parcel to see what's for sale and where it's banned from, it can stand at one spot and look at everything on the sim.

If you have banned Grid Shepard from your parcel and are still seeing stuff listed at the sheepbot site, send them a note - it's a bug, it's not them trying to be evil.

Sort of like being contrarian for being contrarian's sake, I suppose.

I really don't expect you to. Let me draw a picture...

If it's a big deal to you, don't put the stuff up for sale you don't want bought.

If you don't want the bot on your land or don't want people tping there to buy the object then set up a group.

I don't think it's a big deal and no one has made a solid arguement to convince me otherwise.

no it isn't!

I've actually agreed with plenty of people on here in the past, just usually not with the alarmists and doomsayers...which constitute most of this section of the forum's posters.

Is it a bug? - or simply the way it works? It doesnt even make reasonable sense that it will go to every parcel.

I dont think they are trying to be evil. What they are doing is Datamining everyone's objects and then choosing what to display.

Some people object to a third party doing that. In fact the most common comment I get from non Forums readers on this topic is "Only LL should be able to do that". Of course I dont hang out with many scripters and bot makers.



One thing - in the long run banning individual Bots will be an unworkable solution even if it does "work" on any one bot. You simply wont know all the names of all the bots snooping around, and your banlist will be too small.

No one seems interested in a way to label Bots as Bots (except Ironically someone from ESC) so that you could ban all of them as a group - So I really dont see how this one will get solved.

Sorry - I wasn't trying to take a side.. It just seemed that I had heard people make an issue of it not needing to be on a parcel to scan objects or maybe of it not getting parcel info right or not respecting it being banned or something like that. I thought maybe there was some confusion about the way bots worked..

Never mind.

No its okay - Im sorry if it seemed i was shouting you down, I didnt mean to be.

If it is a bug Id be interested in knowing - But I suppose they wont tell us how the bot actually works.

If it's not respecting the ban list or listing parcels incorrectly than I'd say yes, that probably is a bug.

As for moving around the grid, I don't think there's a lot of different ways that it can work. If you have a question about how bots work, I'm sure at least a few people around could take a good guess at it..

think you are right but on any of the 4 threads - not many have - which is interesting

You can't compare A to B and then claim that the core part of B isn't relevant to the analogy. Webspiders copy content, not mere metadata, that's what they do and were specifically designed to do. Google uses it to reproduce a cached copy of a single page, the internet archive project does it with entire sites. Both collect and reproduce IP that isn't their own, searchbot does nothing of the sort so the analogy just fails unless you're willing to accept the content copying part as acceptable in SL.

Froogle that was brought up is more fitting since it aggregates things that are for sale, in a single search engine.

(Edited because Froogle appears to be auto opt-in, although it would still follow the standard webspider rules, whereas ESC' bot doesn't without an explicit opt-out)

It's obvious you didn't bother to read any of the other threads.

No mod items set for sale with "Buy object" will retain their "For Sale" property and there is nothing the owner can do about it because those objects no mod. This is a year old bug that ESC claimed to know nothing about.

Another bug occurs on certain items you just bought and when you rez them. They'll still be marked for sale, compounded with another bug that will leave "Sell Copy" selected on a no-copy item. ESC acknowledged this one but their workaround is inherently flawed because they only exclude "Sell Original", while the bug leaves it as "Sell Copy" so it still gets listed none the less.

In both those cases you have things set for sale that the owner did not mark as for sale.

Well, isn't that an LL issue and not a ESC issue? If those bugs were fixed, would you still have a problem with these bot?

Froogle is entirely opt out although you can also submit your data directly to Google if you don't want to wait for the spider.

There isn't any excuse for a multi-million development company to not know about those bugs. My problem isn't with the fact that they overlooked them, but that they obviously didn't think or do any sort of research. They rushed into it with no thought at all.

If this was a resident-run project things would be different and excusable.

Thanks . The only things I found were how to submit items to Froogle, nothing about an auto opt-in, will edit .

Sure I can, especially when I can SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM that what the analogy is covering is the use of a "bot" to crawl the publically available information in an opt-out fashion, REGARDLESS of what it does with the information. THAT is what the analogy was intended to cover, NOT that sheepbot does or does not copy information a la copybot to EXACTLY and IDENTICALLY MATCH Google, which the word "analogy" doesn't require anyway. ESPECIALLY when that is the CORE of the DEBATE, hence the "PRIVACY" part of the discussion.

So, no, for what it was USED for, the analogy is quite valid.

And yet - Im the one accused of spin.

The grid isnt the same as the traditional internet.

People dont have little pink houses and white picket fences, and live out virtual lives on a webpage.

So...why doesn't everyone who is offended by ESC's Searchbot stop using SLB and stop visiting any area built by ESC?

Money talks.

I'm not a fan of having my data collected, sorted, and analyzed...and then targeted junkmail sent to me. It sucks. It's also a fact of life. However--I have never and will never shop anywhere that sends me junkmail. I speak with my money--regardless of how insignificant that money is to the corporation.

Case in point: I played fantasy football last year through CBS Sportsline. Even though I opted out of their 'newsletter' and 'announcements', they started sending them to me anyway. Now, I have nothing to do with that website and will play my $150 fantasy football league somewhere else.


Summary: Don't like it? Stop supporting ESC. They're not doing anything illegal...just something some people don't like.

No spin involved.

Never claimed they were the same. READ the DEFINITION of the word "analogy". It doesn't have ANYTHING to do with being "the same"; it has to do with comparing aspects of different things to illustrate similarities for the purposes of expanding understanding of a point.

SheepBot/SheepIndex is LIKE GoogleBot/Google in that it indexes everything it can find in the domain within which it operates, subject to some ruleset. They are both opt-out, meaning you have to either use a local function like a robots.txt file (or banning the SheepBot from your land) or go to the indexer site to remove your website. They both store metadata about the things they scan. Google stores more, but again, it is irrelevant to the previous points, because they are the ones which affect the argument, which is about what, again? PRIVACY, right? Making a copy of stuff is sidereal to the issue of it going around scanning things higgledy-piggledy in the first place.

The point is, if you feel SheepBot is invading your privacy, then if you also had a website on the net, GoogleBot would ALSO be considered "invading your privacy" for the same reasons. If you want private webspace, put a password on your website (aka "banning/access restrictions", and yes, I know there is no direct analogue in SL; that's one of the points of contention), or keep your webserver on your own private network, allowing only people you want to access your website onto it (aka "Private Island".

Most people (I'd say the VAST majority) who use Google use it for the INDEX, not the CACHE, which is another reason why the analogy holds up just fine.

This was a key issue in "automated burglary".

The crawler and esc were likened to the "I can do it, therefore it must be okay" types.

Some felt that this secondlife-crawler needed to be nipped in the bud because it ignores common decency and disrespects people by not treating a private residence in secondlife as they would an analogous residence in RL.

Where the concern fell apart for me was in how people were going about trying to demand the respect for the privacy they felt due. Some seemed to think that attacking esc would set an example that this kind of (curious/invasive) behavior wouldn't be tolerated..

My take on the situation was that there would always be a minority of people with no respect for our wishes in secondlife and that we must, as responsible residents, look out for ourselves and pressure linden lab to clarify their position on certain activities that the ToS and CS utterly do not address. (in my case, I'm seeking clarification on the issue of exporting 'public' data from secondlife and republishing it elsewhere).

ESC got attacked primarily because its searchbot was fatally flawed from conception, imposed on Residents without their permission or (except, I think, ESC's user group) their knowledge, demonstrably injured innocent Residents for no reason except ESC's perceived self-interest, was maintained for a considreable time in the face of full knowledge on the part of ESC that they were injuring innocent bystanders, and was defended by junkyard-dog attacks on protesting victims and other methods that made it plain that ESC's attitude toward other Residents wasw both contemptuous and exploitive to an unnatural degree.

I was and am one of the lead counter-attackers, so I have some knowledge of the motivations. I originally was mildly in favor of Electric Sheep Company because I think well-conceived and responsible third-party businesses could be/should be good for SL. I initially was glad to hear they were introducing an additional search product for finding stuff for sale in SL, because there is obviously a need for a GOOD search process.

But then I found out what the ESC spybot was.

Initially, I thought, just let them see what a problem they cause and motivate them to change their ways.

Then I found out how contemptible ESC's attitude toward SL and Residents was, and how contemptible its apologists were. I consider their hostility toward me for calling them on their intellectual dishonesty and contempt for others a badge of honor, and I hope to keep earning it because I think SL and its residents deserve far better and this is one way of helping it and them get something better.

And yes, I concluded that people so obviously intent on abusing SL and its Residents for their own private profit DO need to be made an example of, because there are far worse than they out there, who need to be instructed they should look elsewhere for victims.

It is clear that Residents do need to consider what actions they can take for themselves in their own defense. One of these is petitioning, if necessary pressuring, LL to do the right (and intelligent) thing. But there are others. And we need to explore and implement them.

This brings up something I of which I hadn't thought, but which is important. Anyone doing RL business in SL could find the lack of privacy to be a real problem. I can see situations in which one might want to invite the public, but have things understood to be "off the record," and other situations where part of a sim would be meant for public access and another part for private collaboration. That's not something that is really possible now. People using SL for business collaboration need total privacy even more than users in residential areas. If we want RL business in SL, better privacy is a must.



That's an *extremely* good question. I expect someone at this point to chime in and say the contents of SL are just like the contents of the web, but that's not necessarily true.

There are lots of ways of doing things, and indeed we have been forced to use workarounds and odd ways of making things do what we need. There's almost always an unprotected side to things we have to do (selling parts of a build to the new owner for 0L, for instance).

It's very unsettling when a new front is opened up that exploits the weakness of an area we depend upon in our workarounds. If we don't hear about the change right away it's only luck that we don't get burned.

I think the ESC bot is a good idea that should have been rolled out with respect for residents.

Land within Second Life is inherently public. The objects being scanned are explicitly set to be FOR SALE. It doesn't get much more public than that; I agree that there could be better controls on the land level (the equivalent of a robots.txt file on the web) to control how search engines index the information.


Okay, you started out well, but this is uncalled for. I have consulted for ESC in the past, but haven't for months; I have a completely separate full-time job that keeps me fairly busy. You say you give me credit for my disclaimer, then proceed to completely contradict yourself through this comment.


Actually, they often market it as the next evolution of the web, a 3-D web:

"Philip Rosedale: People always believe that the idea of simulating a three-dimensional world will make the experience of people in it different because it's three dimensional, and that's certainly true. However, there's a second thing about the 3D web that makes it different than the 2D web, and is really important, which is that there are other people there with you when you're experiencing it."

And that quote was found with about 15 seconds of Googling.

Regards,

-Flip

Perhaps. But when the first thing you see on the Official Site, which is where at least I got my information about SL from, trumpets "Second Life is Virtual World Created and Owned by it's residents." And "Own Virtual Land" and "Buy and Sell Lindens" is prominently dispayed along with how much money has been spent in the past day, it's a pretty good indicator of where the major interest lies. In my opinion.